All Around The Town

As sleet pelted him, Newport News resident Jason Jacobsen popped the hood of his 1985 Pontiac and tinkered with the engine. Despite the cold, he didn't need a jump-start.

"Nah, it's not the weather," Jacobsen said. "It's just a piece of junk."

Jacobsen took advantage of a day off to replace his car's distributor after the engine caught fire last week.

Tuesday was the third day in the past week Jacobsen stayed home from work because of the winter blast belting Hampton Roads.

Jacobsen works for a homebuilder.

"You're not getting anything done on a day like this," he said.

Jacobsen leaned over the side of his car, prying at the cold engine. He wore fingerless gloves to better grip the parts. He also wore a maroon stocking hat, camouflage pants and an oversized flannel shirt.

"It's not that cold," he said. "It's the wind."

Shipyard worker Melvin Ball stood in sleet as he waited for his bus at 5:40 a.m. outside the International House of Pancakes near Jefferson Avenue and Thimble Shoals Boulevard.

At noon, Ball waited to go home under a bus shelter in downtown Newport News. The mix of rain and ice was still falling.

Ball didn't mind waiting in the cold for a bus or going home after only five hours into a 10-hour shift.

"If you dress warmly, it's not a problem," Ball said. "For me, with public transportation and then working inside, it's not that bad."

Despite poor road conditions, Ball said public buses got him to and from work on time.

He planned to do little more than relax when he got home. Ball's forecast for the evening called for a shower, dinner and television.

"I'm going to rest," he said. "They said if we can make it, to come in tomorrow. If the buses are running, I will be here."

At Bell Atlantic, there were no network problems to speak of in Virginia on Tuesday, but there were human problems.

Too many people made calls. The result: lots of "fast busy" signals, indicating a clogged network.

"When people are cooped up inside, they tend to want to call family and friends that they otherwise wouldn't be speaking to," said Michel Daley, a Bell Atlantic spokesman. "The network was built on the assumption that everyone will not try to access the network at the same time."

When callers encounter a fast busy, Daley advised, they should hang up and try again in a few minutes.

GTE spokeswoman Lacy Yeatts said that GTE's network has not encountered any problems in its network, in the Middle Peninsula, Smithfield or Isle of Wight.

"We're in great shape," she said.

Tuesday's snow meant good times for some businesses. Hollywood Video on Warwick Boulevard saw a steady stream of customers all day, many approaching the counter with two, three and four videos. It was more than twice the normal customers on a typical morning, manager Marie Schreyer said.

David Parr, an employee of Duron Paints, and Lynn Parr, a day-care mother, both had the day off, as did their 11-year-old daughter. So the family had four movies in hand: "Bowfinger," "The Thomas Crown Affair," "Dudley-Do-Right" and "An Ideal Husband."

For Susaye Bardlavens, having time to watch the Bruce Lee movies she was holding would be relaxing, she said. But even better, she predicted, would be spending some time with her husband.

"And, hopefully, we'll have the day off tomorrow, too," she said.

The College of William and Mary was closed, but several students didn't get the message and raced to classes. Amy Cadge, 20, got to her 8 a.m. class to find "two sets of footprints and all of these rabbit tracks."

In the field by the dorms on Jamestown Road, three college guys pushed a massive snowball toward a 9-foot snowman.

"There are a lot of these unfinished snowmen so we decided to make a fort out of them," said Kevin Hosmillo, 21. A battle could happen later, he said. "We're preparing for that."

Meredith Gayle, 18, was bummed classes were canceled. She stayed up until 2 a.m. studying, and she was ready to teach her Shakespeare class a lesson.

"I read Julius Caesar, like, six times. I was ready to slam it through the floor and say ... 'You have to give me my A.' "

Mathews Emergency Dispatcher Christian Foster said that around mid-morning Tuesday he had only one report of a vehicle in a ditch. About the low rate of accidents: "That's 'cause every time they call and ask about the roads, I tell them to stay home."

There were more cars in ditches as the snow continued to fall.

"I'm not even going to open tonight," said James McLellan, manager of Atlanta Beergarten in Newport News.